


motorcycle drive by

by sundowns



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M, Non-Explicit Sex, Pining, Reunions, Smoking, Soulmates, Teleportation, motorbiker kiyoomi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-30
Updated: 2020-12-30
Packaged: 2021-03-11 02:41:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28427964
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sundowns/pseuds/sundowns
Summary: In a world where being human is a guesthouse, two souls become lost on the passage of chasing home — one jumps from space to time and the other one from lodges to motels.(One arrives and departs every ten hours in ten days, only to return in ten years.)
Relationships: Miya Atsumu/Sakusa Kiyoomi
Comments: 14
Kudos: 108





	motorcycle drive by

**Author's Note:**

> please accept this humble sakuatsu as my first attempt at fantasy(?). happy holidays!

The first time Kiyoomi meets Atsumu, it’s on a four lane freeway heading outside of Tokyo. There’s a jig on his motorbike while he’s at an 80-kph speed, something like the entire world crashing down on his backseat, nothing short of boulder-like, and he almost slams himself into an SUV when he accidentally wrys the gas full throttle.

Fortunately, he gets the hang of it, what with being familiar about the crevices and know-hows of his seven-month old YZF. Overtaking a few vehicles until he’s met by a clear road only does he glance back to be met by a man his size — his face is not visible, covered by a tinted headgear and with whatever bad luck he may bring — and he fears for his life whether it’s the residual hangover he’s getting.

“Rev up!” the man shouts and his arms envelope around Kiyoomi’s waist. Kiyoomi frowns, fully pissed with the engine speaking up for him. “Hey, rev up!”

“What?!”

“Police!”

 _Shit._ Kiyoomi has honestly lost count of the times he’s been ticketed for overspeeding. This time, he decides they’re not going to get it (what with an almost empty wallet in his back pocket that he’s already set aside for the next motel), and kicks the gear to a four.

Upping his speedometer, from a ninety to a hundred and ten, he easily maneuvers into the half-busy lane. His ears are ringing when his passenger shouts an unsolicited “Long live Japan!” and as if the universe is responding to him, the police sirens blare bright red and blue and _loud_ in the three-PM heat.

The farther he exits Tokyo and into another unfamiliar city, the more the road clears to his front and back. They sift through a tunnel, then the police car isn’t tailing him anymore and the arms around his waist have become lightly gripping hands. The man is still there, his subdued laugh matching the toned-down engine, fingers sliding into the pockets of Kiyoomi’s leather jacket, and he remains like the mystery of how he got there at all —

Until Kiyoomi slams on his brakes in front of a dingy motel in the outskirts of Yokohama.

He kills the engine off, waits for the stranger to get his germs off his bike before he swings his leg out of the seat. They’re of similar height, only that he’s a little taller when not slouched, and he takes that alone as a threat. He steps back in defiance and frees his head from his headgear, clutching it hard and ready to brandish it as his own means of weaponry.

“Hey,” Kiyoomi calls out, jutting his head towards him. “Who are you?”

When the mystery guy answers, his voice is proofed by the foam margining his helmet and it’s certainly not the most impressionable one to Kiyoomi — nasally, airy, and never sure. But he watches, in the kind of anticipation he would never like to admit — the way the stranger upends his head to slide it off, ruffle his strands to get rid of his hat hair, then smoothen it again on the bend back up.

He’s expecting for a knife or a gun, worse case scenario, _death_ , followed by a news article about how a destitute rando just got killed off by a man in ripped jeans, army bomber jacket and a ratty Kurt Cobain shirt, but no, that’s certainly not it, not when his thoughts get contrasted by summer nostalgia in the form of forest brown irises. Midday blonde hair. Stretched lips like sunset horizon.

“It’s me!”

Permanent frown lines donned with an even deeper frown, Kiyoomi slides his mask back up and heads into the building.

“Wh— hey!”

“No, I do not know you,” he says with finality and speeds up when the stranger catches up to him.

“Omi-kun!”

Kiyoomi stops on his feet to turn to him. “What the _heck_ did you just call me?”

“It’s on your helmet.”

 _“What.”_ Kiyoomi spits in confusion and turns his helmet around to see an engraved _Omi-kun_ at the base of the back. He doesn’t remember how it got there and he certainly doesn’t know who did it. He gives him an accusing look. “Did you do this?”

“How’d I know! You were speeding up like your laundry’s about to get rained on.”

Kiyoomi’s face darkens when he knows he won’t get any reasonable response from this man. Under the scrutiny of Kiyoomi’s gaze, he doesn’t flinch and he carries smug bravado under that stare that he seems to be basking himself into. The guy meets his eyes, light opposed to dark, and that’s when Kiyoomi breaks eye contact to finally head inside.

“Single bed,” he announces to the lobbyist.

“Nuh-uh,” the guy interrupts and swats his card to the side. “We’ll take the suite. Thanks.”

“ _We_?” Kiyoomi chokes at his audacity. “No way in fucking hell I’m sharing a room with some stranger.”

The lobbyist chews on her gum uninterestedly as she watches them banter — not even two hours into the whole encounter and thirty minutes into meeting. Kiyoomi slides his card back and suppresses a groan when the lady says, “no single bed available.”

“Then the cheapest one. Two days.”

Only then that mystery guy slams a thick wad of cash into the counter. Kiyoomi’s card bounces on the synthetic with a sad tap and he watches the way the lobbyist’s face glows at what seems to be money that just got withdrawn right out of the bank.

“Suite,” Mystery Guy says. “We’ll take the two-day bundle.”

* * *

It’s not that Kiyoomi is close to being a beggar at this point, but like what people say, beggars can’t choose. Besides, he takes the queen bed by the window so shamelessly after taking a hot shower, and he doesn’t even bother asking his sponsor whether he prefers the window or wall side.

“Hey, Omi-kun—”

“I’m not repaying you with anything. You dragged yourself into this,” Kiyoomi ends him before he can even start and buries his head into a pillow. “Good night.”

“Oh,” mystery guy drones as if realizing it. “I wasn’t gonna let you repay me.”

“Then what’s with the cash?”

“‘Cause you brought me here.”

“What?” Kiyoomi gets up on his elbows to look at him. He only noticed he’s still on his day clothes, lying on the clean bed, and it’s giving him passing goosebumps. “You just fell into my motorbike like some overripe mango. What are you, a creep?”

“Oh, you’ll know,” he swats his hand and begins taking his jacket off. Kurt Cobain comes into proper view and Kiyoomi is reminded of mixtapes in late high school. Nirvana . Stone Temple Pilots. Soundgarden. He gives Kiyoomi that look that he can’t quite get a hold of, smug and maybe a little wistful at the same time. “And once you do know, it’s not gonna be enough time ‘til you start asking me questions.”

* * *

When Kiyoomi wakes up at six the following morning, the guy isn’t there anymore. He suspects it must have been some stoned dream he was having, but he knows that’s not the case, not when he finds the army bomber jacket draped across the vacant bed next to his.

* * *

Kiyoomi is reveling under the sun by the veranda with his late breakfast when mystery guy reappears on the seat opposite to him. And he won’t apologize for it, won’t ever consider it at all, even when it’s purely disgusting that he spits his mango juice into his face.

The latter shrieks with eyes pinched closed and Kiyoomi contains a snort — which automatically goes down into a coughing fit.

“Why the _fuck_ do you just appear out of nowhere,” he gasps. “What are you?”

He watches the way the other blindly pads for something (maybe a tissue or a clean cloth), but he doesn’t like the way his sticky hands aimlessly straggle on the table, _not with his spit-induced mango juice spread around_ , so he throws him a spare napkin.

“I’m a teleporter,” he says while he rubs his face into the napkin (which Kiyoomi finds absolutely nasty unless he washes it with soap and water). His words are muffled by the cloth and Kiyoomi has to ask again whether he heard the exact thing.

“A what?”

“A teleporter,” he repeats, only when he’s dried his face.

“A _what._ ”

“You don’t believe me?” He makes a face and sounds rather deflated. “And you don’t even remember me now?”

“What the heck are you saying. Are you high or something—I’m calling the police for you—”

“Whoa, whoa—easy! Am not high,” mystery guy chuckles, which keeps Kiyoomi’s thumb halfway into dialing 110. He takes a big bite on Kiyoomi’s last bread roll with _unwashed hands_ then puts it back on the plate with a flagrant bite mark. “Not drunk. And certainly not on drugs. Just a teleporter.”

The way he even talks with his mouth full is enough to kickstart Kiyoomi’s blood shriveling.

“It’s too early for you to sound stoned.”

“Am not stoned, Omi-omi,” he convinces.

“What— Omi-omi…” he grimaces. “What is _that_.”

“What? It’s cuter than Omi-kun.”

“Please,” Kiyoomi sighs, massaging the space between his eyebrows with his pointer knuckle. “I am going to forgive myself this time for being drunk while I suspect this juice being alcoholic. This is your chance to get the fuck out of here… or out of my mind. Whatever.”

“How many times do I have to tell you that I’m a breathing hum—”

“I can’t be right here talking to air.”

“I’m _eating_ your _breakfast_ with you,” he emphasizes. “You still have my meal coupon or somethin’? Am hungry.”

Kiyoomi swats his hands, “no coupon”, and then mystery guy goes out of his way. This time Kiyoomi really tells himself he’s overdosed from whatever liquid he’s been consuming these days. But of course that’s not the case, not when the half-bitten bread roll sits right there to mock him.

In a few but long minutes, he comes back to the veranda with a full course lunch on his tray. Kiyoomi pinches his thigh under the table just in time that mystery guy’s shoe knocks with his toe.

“Heard their spicy _gyudon_ ’s good.”

Kiyoomi squints his eyes. “How do you know.”

“Lady recommended it to me.”

“In this sweltering heat.”

“But beef!” he exclaims, splitting his chopsticks in half after uttering a prayer to whatever god he believes in. “Never in the wrong moment to have beef.”

Maybe Kiyoomi should’ve gotten black coffee in risk of getting palpitations, just to make sure he can properly wake himself up. His mango juice has warmed down and it now tastes like flavored-water, so he sets that aside, losing appetite altogether.

“You going to finish that?” The guy points his chopsticks to Kiyoomi’s Western-style breakfast all partially consumed — half-eaten scrambled eggs, half-bitten bread roll (courtesy of him), and an abandoned soggy bacon.

“I’m not eating that goddamn bread.”

“For someone who’s broke, you’re pretty wasteful.”

“Wh—I’m not broke.” Kiyoomi defends. For literally no reason. Because he’s indeed on the verge of his own monetary downfall, and even if this stranger got the hint of it, he’s not going to declare his financial standing to him.

“Aight, buddy. I believe you,” he says and snatches Kiyoomi’s half-empty plate. “Hey, I’m taking this.”

He doesn’t even wait for Kiyoomi’s affirmation before he’s throwing the egg and bacon into his _gyudon._ The bread roll goes directly into his mouth.

“Hey,” Kiyoomi calls out and watches the way he brightens around his food, mouth full. He’s strangely reminded of a beaver. “What’s your name?”

“Atsumu.”

 _Atsumu_ , Kiyoomi thinks, feeling a strange ring to it.

 _Midday blonde hair. Forest brown irises in summer nostalgia._ He frowns.

“What? You hate it?”

He shakes his head. “No reason.” Atsumu shrugs and continues to gobble down his weastern fusion meal.

Kiyoomi finds out that his biggest pet peeve comes in the form of Atsumu with his lack of eating etiquette — loud chewing, unwashed hands, and the stray rice grain on his cheek. He’s tempted to flick it away, not because he cares but because it annoys him to death, but of course he’s not about to do that. Never to a stranger radiating shit-eating energy. So, he stands up from his seat to leave him alone in the veranda.

“Where you goin’?”

“None of your business.”

But for someone like Atsumu, of course it has to be his business, too. Kiyoomi doesn’t know how he managed to wolf down all that food in a span of two minutes when he finds him in the parking lot, squatting by his motorbike.

“What is it?”

“A YZF-R6.”

“Looks cool,” Atsumu comments, squatting beside him. “Now, what seems to be the problem?”

“None. Just doing a maintenance check.”

“You really love this baby, do you?”

Kiyoomi stands up, ignoring him. He unlocks the shutter then inserts the key into ignition. When Atsumu goes his way to ask some more, something of _is it why you’re broke because you bought this_ , Kiyoomi kicks the gear to neutral and twists the grip into full revolution. His voice gets muffled by its thunder-like thrumming but Atsumu is louder than thunder can allow, and it’s only just a matter of whoever goes to jail first.

“You’re going to run out of gas!”

Kiyoomi eases up the revolution and deadpans at him like he’s stupid. “You’re supposed to warm this up.”

“Oh, I know. Just wanted to strike up a conversation.”

That stuns him into countering the conversation itself and he grimaces.

“What time did you sleep last night, Omi-kun?”

“Five,” he answers for the sake of it. “Woke up at eleven. Slept back at one.”

“Your sleep cycle’s pretty fucked up.”

“Tell me that next time when you’ve taken a shower.”

Atsumu squeaks. “I shower whenever I go!”

 _Go_ probably meant those periods where Atsumu just appears and disappears all of a sudden. Or _teleport_ , as what he claims it.

“Then get changed from that Kurt Cobain shirt.”

“My clothes don’t smell, believe me or not. When I teleport, it’s like I go through a laundry machine or somethin’,” Atsumu says and Kiyoomi is convinced he’s high. “D’you hate Kurt Cobain?”

“No,” he grumbles. “I have a poster of Nirvana.”

“Oh. I don’t listen to their music.”

“Then why do you—”

“‘Cause it looks cool, alright? Can you blame me? Even an uptight freak like you likes Kurt Cobain.”

“Uptight freak—”

“Alright, not _that_. Maybe someone without culture.”

“ _What_.”

“ _No,_ not that!” Atsumu groans in frustration and Kiyoomi deadpans at him. “But I do think you look like the typical emo boy.”

“I’m not an emo boy.”

“You dress in black.”

“That’s not what being an emo boy is. I don’t listen to My Chemical Romance.”

Atsumu makes the stupidest snort Kiyoomi’s ever heard in a long time and he hates it. “Can’t believe you’re putting MCR as some kinda benchmark of what an emo should be.”

“Like the way you categorize people into it when they wear all black,” Kiyoomi sighs and shuts the engine off, forgetting to lock the shutter. When he remembers, Atsumu has already done it himself. He walks back into the building with heavy steps and mutters, “Why am I even talking to you.”

“Hey, Omi-omi-kun!”

 _Omi-omi-kun._ “Don’t talk to me.”

Like that, Atsumu cackles behind him until it lags into an echo the farther he steps forward. Even when he gets inside, the sound still remains like an underwater dream, and it stays that way even when Kiyoomi doesn’t see him in the next eighteen hours.

* * *

When Kiyoomi leaves the motel, Atsumu isn’t there, and he never hopes for him to show up again.

* * *

His next accommodation doesn’t serve meals but it saves him money. There’s a kitchenette that willingly forces him to get up and buy groceries from a close _konbini_. He’s on the pastry aisle, on a hunt for some sweet-tooth satisfaction when he spots the same looking bread roll from yesterday’s breakfast.

There, he stands stupid in some retail wall, and a blip of the teleporter with midday blonde hair flashes in his mind — no proper eating etiquette, beaver-like chewing, ratty overused shirt with the face of a band frontman he doesn’t even listen to.

He contemplates on one pack, but it’s a ‘buy one, get one free’ promo, so he chucks two into his basket. He doesn’t even know why. It doesn’t even taste that good.

And when Kiyoomi gets back to his apartment, he almost drops a whole bag of tangerines upon seeing him again in the flesh. This time he doesn’t poof his way in from still air in greeting, rather, he’s lying very leisurely on the torn leather couch adjacent to Kiyoomi’s single-size bed.

“The fuck—”

“Omi-kun!” Atsumu jolts, as if getting caught off-guard, and scrambles up from the couch to run to him. He stops at a distance where he knows he should only be at and only takes the cue in stepping further to help him with the bags.

“How did you find me?”

“Looked at every motel for you,” he explains; he’s a little breathless, and Kiyoomi’s gaze shifts into Kurt Cobain’s face donning dark spots of sweat. “Figured you haven’t left Yokohama yet. Go figure! This is my fifteenth motel.”

He is clearly having trouble responding to that but it seems like Atsumu doesn’t expect him to talk either. He’s engrossed on his own, unpacking the groceries and carelessly chucking vegetables into pantries like he bought them. When he digs for the last items, in his hand are those two damned packs of bread rolls, and he lights up at the sight. Kiyoomi stares at him stupid, like what he just did in the pastry aisle, and feels a jig somewhere, like that Tokyo freeway occurrence but lighter. (Maybe akin to an overripe mango falling on top of his head.)

“Imagine if someone saw you,” he says and joins Atsumu in properly arranging the pantry.

“Someone did. They were havin’ sex.”

“What the _fuck_.”

“Believe me or not, I’ve seen worse. There was—”

“Don’t.” Kiyoomi cringes, stopping him. “I’m not going to ask you about it.”

“Aight,” he lilts. “I won’t.”

When Kiyoomi gets out of the shower, Atsumu has gotten his hands working by the kitchen counter chopping vegetables. Kiyoomi walks to him warily and tries not to think about how he could just possibly swing the knife and murder him on the spot. He stops less than three feet from where he stands and slightly tiptoes enough to observe him.

“You’re shit with your knife skills.”

Atsumu obviously doesn’t foreshadow his presence and ultimately startles on the spot. He drops the knife tip-first.

“Don’t scare me like that, dammit!”

Without premonition, Kiyoomi gives out an unflattering snort which comes close to a laugh to whoever considers him prickly, but Atsumu only clicks his tongue and proceeds with his work _without_ washing the knife.

He winces. “I am not eating that.”

Atsumu snorts. “Yeah, whatever.”

But a whole pot of beef _kare_ later, he visibly enjoys dinner past Atsumu’s poor knife skills and germ-induced food, because despite the potatoes cut as big as the size of his entire mouth, he is actually quite skilled at flavoring. He calls it taste over presentation. On the follow-up, he mentions learning it from his brother.

“Thought you won’t eat it. But this is your second serve already.” Kiyoomi really dislikes that lilting tone he uses. “You like it?”

“I’m starving.”

“Aight, buddy.” He reaches over to pat his head and Kiyoomi instantly cowers, swatting his hand away. Atsumu retracts and only chuckles, then it lags again into an echo similar to that one from two days ago.

Kiyoomi digs into his final mouthful and takes a silent peek at the other. In the slot between his fingers, Atsumu’s face is somber in a way he can’t make out of.

“You didn’t wait for me,” Kiyoomi hears him say, as if there was a promise made at some point in time. He watches him work with his chopstick to slice a carrot in half.

“How am I supposed to know that I should,” he deadpans in defense. “I don’t even know when you’re coming back.”

Atsumu looks up in surprise as if he’s only realized it and lets out a startled laugh.

“Ah, right!” He smacks the table and reaches for his phone in his back pocket. “I’ll message you next time—here—” Phone is slid forward; Kiyoomi only stares. “What? Type me your email.”

“Now why would I?”

“So you’ll know when to get me fresh bread rolls!” he exclaims like Kiyoomi already knows. He is obviously still skeptical, but Atsumu beats him to it. “It’s clean! I wash it in the laundry every once in a while!”

Kiyoomi thinks he’s _really_ weird. Bordering crazy even.

But he takes Atsumu’s phone in his hands, because he just knows he has to, and punches his email into an open notes app. He wonders why it has to be an email instead of his number (it’s such an old method, if not formal) but he chooses not to question him and gives his phone back once he’s done.

Atsumu does rapid clicks on his phone, which is quite a deal-breaker for Kiyoomi, if not on top of Atsumu’s plethora of _deal-breakers_ , because phones should be prohibited outside of mealtime. He then puts it down as if he’s heard him, then Kiyoomi receives a very uncommon ping from his phone.

There’s an email on his notification bar, and when he opens it, it’s from _Atsumu_ slash _a_tsumu@email.com_. No subject. No texts contained. No anything other than a photo attached below.

Provided with nothing else but a shitty internet connection, Kiyoomi impatiently waits for the photo to load. Atsumu now proceeds with his lunch, seemingly uninterested in what he will think about it (which he suspects must be something random) until he’s faced by a poorly taken photo of the solar eclipse. The sky is hued to a purple, a little blurry to boot, but the overshadowed sun is still visible, albeit miniscule.

Kiyoomi is taken to a memory back in 2014, about the hype of the imminent Great Solar Eclipse that would occur in Japan only once in many, many years. The memory is like the picture, blurry and now shed to be left into a miniscule fragment in the back of his head. He’s already forgotten about his surroundings, where he was and who he was with, but he knows he remembers the feeling well.

He looks up from his screen. To Atsumu — really doing nothing else than eat and indulge himself into his commercialized pastry. In a time slowed down, Kiyoomi chances upon his eyes and they remind him of the solar eclipse. A lopsided smile so unlike him, and Kiyoomi feels like he’s known him before.

But then he doesn’t and looks away.

When Atsumu breaks the silence, he’s picking at the leftover potatoes on the caldron. Kiyoomi is tempted to smack his hand away.

“D’you really not remember me?”

Kiyoomi stares at him. He’s holding a smile that doesn’t quite reach the standards of what a smile should be, like it’s only a stretch of the lips made to look like it.

 _Do you really not remember me?_ It’s such a strange question to come from a stranger you haven’t even known yet, cumulatively for a day at least.

“Am I supposed to?” Kiyoomi asks with genuine interest (and he might not sound like it.)

“Well, yeah, but—” Atsumu shrugs. He pauses, sighs, and puts his chopsticks down. “Hey, I could tell you cool stuff ‘bout me.”

“As if I’m going to listen.”

“Why not?” he sets his utensils aside and props his arms on the table. “Don’t be so prickly, Omi-omi. I know you’re looking for something fun to get you by. Other than talk to your motorbike, that is.”

“You can rattle about your life. It doesn’t mean I’m going to listen to you.”

“You _rob_ people?”

“No. Steal from capitalists.”

Kiyoomi’s eye twitches. And although he’s got himself hooked into whatever the hell Atsumu is doing with his life, he won’t ever admit to himself how he just gave in from listening to actually _responding_ while they both squeeze themselves in the tiny sink. “How is that any different?”

“It’s different! Like stealing from thieves.”

Kiyoomi makes dubious hum and passes a soaped bowl to Atsumu to which he washes with water over.

“I view myself in a safe or vault of some politician or businessman, to put it simply. Then Atsumu would be there in a blink of an eye.”

He snorts at the third-person reference. “Explains the cash then.”

“We could go to a five-star with the money I make, y’know.” Atsumu elbows him and the dishwater wets his rolled up sleeves. He grimaces and decides to reschedule his laundry day tomorrow.

“You didn’t make that money. You stole it.”

“It’s stolen from people! I donate a large amount to orphanages.”

“With _your_ name?”

“Am not registered,” Atsumu explains. “So by anonymous.”

“...and they question you about it.”

“They can’t. I just leave a bag.”

Kiyoomi only nods, doesn’t comment more about it because he knows he shouldn’t have a say, not when he doesn’t participate himself much economically.

“So, teleportation,” he clears his throat, beginning to wipe the sink dry with a cloth while Atsumu stacks the clean dishes into the rack. “An inherent thing?”

“Ah, no,” Atsumu answers, properly arranging the utensils by size; Kiyoomi’s mildly impressed by it. “It’s ah—” he pauses and then shrugs with a casual stance, as if he’s been met by that question hundreds of times and that answering it has become the inherent thing for him instead. “Well, when you know you don’t belong anywhere, you just start leaving places.”

Kiyoomi can’t explain how much it confuses him and resonates with him at the same time.

“Sounds cool.”

For some reasons he can’t understand, Atsumu chuckles. “Well, you have your way.”

“Huh?”

“Motorbiking.”

“...right.”

But Kiyoomi wouldn’t call it being homeless. Lost, maybe. And he gives in to the fact that under the ball of bewilderment and turn-offs that Atsumu came to be, he knows this part of him comes close to home in a way.

“So, it’s why you come and go.”

He carries no harm in asking this, all in curious grace, but when he glances at Atsumu, it may or may not be stepping on a landmine. He can’t really gloss why he looks as if he’s bearing the blame for something.

“Yep,” Atsumu responds good-naturedly, either way, and perhaps for the sake of it. “I stay here for a total ten hours then leave again for another ten hours.”

“Ah,” he nods, finally understanding it. “Why?”

“Dunno. I was built like this. Kinda complicated but...” When he’s about to wipe his drenched hand into his pants, Kiyoomi throws him a hand towel. “I just have to. It’s like breathing… or working from nine to five.”

“Ah.” He isn’t the type to ask questions, let alone effort himself into conversations, but he asks him anyway. “Where do you go in ten hours then?”

“Anywhere really. Just not to a place for too long.”

“And that’s a constant.”

“No,” Atsumu shakes his head. “I leave a place for good in ten days.”

 _Ah_ , Kiyoomi drones, having no other say about it other than remembering being a bedspacer at some quiet house in Kyoto. A good two weeks, when things were tranquil and at ease, he almost got comfortable, enough for the landlady to ask whether he’s staying for good.

He can understand Atsumu at this part, and it may be one of the firsts where he holds similarities with him.

In his head, his response rings truly, once again.

_I’m not meant to stay for long, but thank you for your company_.

* * *

He does let Atsumu keep him company for tonight, only because it took him hours to storytell (animatedly, quite so) regarding his whereabouts in places he was not meant to linger. Kiyoomi has never heard someone talk this much in so long.

He’s on the threshold of slumber and half-listening into an Osaka heist incident when Atsumu glances at his watch and excuses himself into the bathroom. Kiyoomi sleeps into the humdrum of the running water and when he wakes up for a shower, Atsumu is not there anymore.

* * *

He’s now far down a hundred kilometers southwest of Tokyo when he receives the second email from him. This time, there’s no photo attached, but there contains a cryptic message that says, or more like asks, _wheru rn_.

The spelling, the grammar, the improper spacing, and the lack of punctuation puts him off, but he tells him his current location with all that’s left of his sanity. Atsumu could be a ghost for all he knows.

He looks out from his balcony, and there before him, Mount Fuji stands with pride.

* * *

Atsumu discovers him smoking against the mountain view the next time they meet. Kiyoomi’s not sure where and when he came in but he comes through the sliding doors to sit on the vacant lawn chair adjacent to his.

“You smoke?”

“Well, I’m smoking,” Kiyoomi mutters around his cigarette, clearly not surprised about his whimsical appearances anymore. Puffs of grey swirl along his lips when he speaks. “so, no shit.”

Atsumu doesn’t have much of a say about that, except that he snatches the pack of Seven Stars from the lawn table and gets himself a stick. Kiyoomi lets him without a fight and watches how he just unabashedly puts the cigarette in between his teeth. He motions for a light and Kiyoomi cocks his eyebrow at the demand.

“Please and thanks.”

So, he digs for a lighter; Atsumu hunches himself into his hand. It flickers to life and Kiyoomi’s cigarette hangs loose in his free hand as he curls his palm around the fire from dying in the breeze. While Atsumu struggles, eyebrows furrowed in concentration, Kiyoomi tries not to think about how the orange hue just effortlessly casts sharp shadows along his profile.

Paper turns into ember and grey pervades the night. It’s seven in the evening — the stars come imminent in the countryside and they swirl along with the man-made lights like phosphenes. Atsumu leans back, taking a long drag and steadily blows out smoke from his lips.

He sighs, head tipped unto the dimming sky, and speaks forlorn. “What a breath of fresh air.”

Kiyoomi snorts smoke from his nose. “Ironic.”

“Hey, Omi-kun,” he starts.

Kiyoomi makes a noncommittal hum.

“What did you do in life before you decided not to do it anymore?”

There’s silence that’s not uncomfortable. Kiyoomi glances at him sideways and takes the half-burnt cigarette in his fingers. He taps the residual ashes into the tray and only completely faces him to blow smoke into his face.

“Omi—!”

He snickers but doesn’t look at him when he answers. “A mechanical engineer.”

“Ooh, that’s hot,” Atsumu comments; Kiyoomi’s counterattack dies in his tongue. His head lacks anything to say and he can only watch Atsumu drag his chair closer to engage. “What happened?”

He shakes his head. “Nothing. Quit after a big project.”

“Ah, no wonder you love that baby.”

“—that... baby?”

“Your motorbike! Geez. ‘Cause you’re a mechanic and all,” Atsumu snorts, taking the cigarette from his lips and killing the light off on the ashtray. When he grabs for the pack and jiggles it for another stick, Kiyoomi doesn’t hesitate to kick his shin.

“ _Ow_ —what was that for?!”

“You haven’t finished yours yet.”

“I don’t finish my cigarettes.”

“Ah, so you’re one of those scums who contribute to climate change by being wasteful.”

“Wh—no, am not like that! I don’t smoke all the time. You don’t even finish your food, Omi-kun.”

“That was once. What do you have a say about me being wasteful?”

Atsumu clicks his tongue and sighs. He seems to resign into his flak with the way he picks up his leftover stick from the ashtray and puts it back in his mouth. Kiyoomi thinks it’s gross, but then not wasteful, at least.

He fishes for the lighter in his back pocket, thumb flicking on the wheel, when he doesn’t expect to be pulled by the back of his neck. Kiyoomi flinches, almost dropping the cigarette from his lips, and his chest rattles in surprise when Atsumu angles his head to light his cigarette up with the tip of his.

Things are steady on the other side, the other side frozen. Kiyoomi watches him sharply inhale through the filler; his brows knot in concentration. He knows moving would be a bad decision (though he’s tempted to throw him off the balcony), so he stays rooted in the most awkward position he’s been in (maybe his entire waking life, if not). He’s lost the concept of time, and only waits for Atsumu’s cigarette to catch light.

His stick quivers in the breeze (he tells himself it should never be from tension), so he holds it up for him. All the while he’s aware of how his fingers lightly touch his.

Atsumu pulls back and blows into Kiyoomi’s face. He laughs; Kiyoomi deadpans.

He’s still left mildly sweating, partly red if he won’t deny it, but he takes a long drag himself and gusts smoke right back at him. It clashes into the residual flurries of white; Atsumu is mildly coughing, but he’s laughing in between rasps and Kiyoomi is suddenly stuck somewhere in 2014. Not through the smoke nor the cigarettes. Not by the lawn set on the motel balcony by Mount Fuji, but the sound.

He tells him, “And if I do say I think I have met you, but do not remember you…”

“Yeah, I know.”

He does not side-eye him this time. Brought by curiosity of what his life might have been, he faces him head on.

“What makes you think I believe you?”

“You told me it.”

“If I did, what was it?”

Atsumu muses over this through inhaling his cigarette, lagging and contemplating. He’s almost at the end of it. He decides on finishing it first, cheeks hollowing until the light stops at the foam, before he squashes the embers with the heel of his shoe.

“Please pick your garbage up.”

“I’ve always known someday you’re gonna forget about me,” he chuckles, no grudges in the undertone, and picks his cigarette butt to chuck into the ashtray. He’s got that look on his face again, smug and somber and a little lost, and Kiyoomi finds himself lost in depicting it in his thoughts. His eyes take the moonlight’s reflection so well, and if Kiyoomi is shameless enough to linger his stare at him, maybe he could see an eclipse in his right iris.

He continues. “But at some point where you won’t think of me anymore, I’m gonna appear in your life again.” He turns to Kiyoomi and that small quirk in the corner of his lips tells him he’s noticed him staring all along. “So, here I am.”

“I met you before,” Kiyoomi repeats.

“That shit was ten years ago.” He waves his hand in dismissal. “I mean for you. It’s three days for me… or somethin’.”

“You don’t just teleport. You also time travel.”

“Yeah, pretty much. I leave a place through both.” He throws his leg over, ankle on knee, and leans back comfortably. “But time traveling’s kinda dangerous, they say; you might get stuck or somethin’ so I usually just teleport. Sometimes, I even meet people I’ve met in previous places.” And then he glances at him, smirking. “Haven’t met you though.”

“You’re saying it’s been ten years until you came back.” Kiyoomi furrows his eyebrows and stops himself from acquiring his fourth stick. “If this was the tenth day, I’ll never see you tomorrow. Not until ten years later.”

“Yeah. For you,” Atsumu mutters, nodding, less tense. And in the next words he says, after a few shared meetings, he seems to have come in peace with it. “That’s why you forget.”

* * *

Atsumu and Kiyoomi are on top of Midtown Tower with Debussy’s Reverie on the day of the 2014 Great Solar Eclipse. They’re seventeen and reckless, in the liminality of being normal high schoolers and being on a trance, and they both stand on the edge of the parapet with the concept of _falling_ out of mind. They get a neat view of the Skytree, one to boast about if one’s a tourist, but they’re really just up there through illegal trespassing.

Atsumu had brought them through his means of access to any place accessible as possible (by teleportation) and Kiyoomi exhales in relief when he sees the lack of people.

Hands on his hips, Atsumu heaves his chest and lets out the biggest sigh; Kiyoomi has his hands in his pocket and they both look into the overshadowed city of Tokyo. It’s a five PM-feel in supposed to be the most scorching hours of the day and his surroundings have now filtered down into dreamy-like colors. When he glances down, he sees a glimpse of himself in the freefall and the bonsai tree at his foot.

Atsumu’s quirk for today comes into randomly acquiring a bonsai tree. Kiyoomi had weirdly stared at him once he was pulled into a florist shop and Atsumu, as vague as he can be, had only said _you’ll see_. Fifteen minutes into the eclipse, Kiyoomi starts to see the tiny crescents of light pouring out through the leaves of the bonsai. Atsumu squats, Kiyoomi follows, because that’s what his life has been for the past ten days, and when he grins at Kiyoomi so childlike and proud, he quietly smiles back at him, lips now easily tugging up from habit.

“Cool, right?”

“I’ve never noticed these things.”

“This your first eclipse?”

Kiyoomi shakes his head. “I don’t go outside during eclipses. I never understood the hype.”

“Expected of an uptight freak like you.”

“...upright freak.”

Atsumu sighs dramatically. “After all, I still couldn’t let you lose.” His hand comes up and pats Kiyoomi’s head which he doesn’t object to. “Don’t miss me too much, alright?”

“Don’t even get it to your head, Miya.”

Atsumu chuckles and sets the bonsai tree aside; the crescent lights have now pervaded evidently. When he scoots into Kiyoomi’s reserved confines, he lets him. They’re face to face now, the tips of their shoes are touching. They hold their gazes for a moment and then Atsumu gently presses his lips to his.

Kiyoomi is too dazed to kiss him back but his heart is at the tip of his throat, and there’s too little time for him to act upon it. He tries protracting one second to five, just a little longer than what the universe lets him, and when Atsumu withdraws, his mischief turns rueful.

“Don’t miss me too much,” he says again. Kiyoomi doesn’t counter this time. “I’ll see you again, that’s for sure.”

“And the probability is?”

“Infinite.”

Kiyoomi scoffs and stands up. He gets off the parapet when his legs begin to numb and ants begin to crawl, because he’s not really in for losing balance and dying at the moment. Atsumu follows suit, leveling his gaze with him.

“Turn around,” he tells him. “So you won’t see me leave. By the time you turn your back again, I’ll be gone.”

Kiyoomi oddly feels like a kid being left on the trolley in the middle of the supermarket aisle, where he doesn’t speak and only listens to what he’s being told. Atsumu is about to leave him, with a baggage of longing for years to come quickly, and he feels lost for a Tokyo native.

But before he turns around, Atsumu utters his tailpiece, the last one for another encounter.

“And the next time we meet, I’ll stand before you, hoping you still remember me.”

Kiyoomi’s lips tug up, then he responds, steady and sure. “Just come and find me. Somehow, I’ll know it’s you.”

“I’ll take it as a promise.”

With that, he seeks Atsumu’s face one last time before deciding not to hold on for too long. As he turns his back to him, he hears scuffs of shoes on concrete and then none.

On a Great Solar Eclipse in 2014, Atsumu leaves by jumping off the rooftop of the Midtown Tower, never to come back by tomorrow. There are no horrified gasps by nonplussed pedestrians, no police sirens, and when Kiyoomi turns back into the sun, he is gone.

* * *

In present, he glances at Atsumu once more and feels his stomach drop into somewhere void, nowhere to be caught by. There’s an interlude of passages — 2014, 2019 and then 2024. The structure of his face has now molded to be more prominent by age, the sharpness of his jaw defined by time, and the stance he emits graduated into something less mischievous and more rueful. Kiyoomi can’t take his eyes off him.

He seems to have a radar that snitches on Kiyoomi staring, because he turns his head to him again and grins.

Then it dawns on him all at once, like his heart knows now.

Atsumu is three days into the future, Kiyoomi ten years. But he now remembers him, as vivid as that midsummer’s day.

* * *

Just a little after late dinner and a shy past eleven PM, they both get ready for bed when Atsumu asks him out of nowhere.

“Hey. Teach me how to ride your motorbike.”

Kiyoomi is already halfway into taking his top off, ready to get into the comfort of his discounted price queen size, and pauses to frown at him.

“What?”

“C’mon,” Atsumu scoots to the edge of his single bed on his stomach. Despite his nuisance naturally installed to his way of living, he never asks Kiyoomi why he chose a room for two. “I have a few hours ‘til I leave and I wanna make the best outta my stay here tonight.”

“How random.”

“Can’t sleep.” He yawns and rubs his eyes in contrast. “Will pay for the gas, full tank. A week of supply.”

Not that Kiyoomi’s about to object to that. He now learns that he’s in no position to decline goodwill if it means it will save him a few pennies.

So, he sighs and puts his top back down, and as he swipes at the jumble of keys on the nightstand, Atsumu lights up and almost falls off the bed scrambling to his feet.

“Will you really?!”

Kiyoomi hums flatly and throws him his army bomber jacket, just to cover him from the cold of wearing nothing but old, worn out Kurt Cobain. He gets a whiff of musk and vanilla, and perhaps pages of library books and cigarette smoke, and gets reminded of museums.

Kiyoomi slips his hoodie on and heads straight for the door, ignoring Atsumu’s yells of _wait!_

He leaves but waits for him in the parking lot to warm the engine up. Not long enough, he appears from the entrance doors, waving at him.

“So?” Atsumu chimes expectantly. “What do I do?”

“Get on and don’t die.”

“...how specific.”

Yet on the contrary to his statement, Kiyoomi does willingly teach him method by method, meticulous enough that the gas won’t die on him and very careful that he doesn’t fall off under his supervision. “If you know how to ride a bike, it’s easy,” he tells him and Atsumu nods, determined.

Atsumu has trouble getting the clutch-gas combo but Kiyoomi is patient with his progress, and even if the summer chill nips at his fingertips, he waits for him to be able to get the full hang of it. His hands easily get cold but he saves himself by tucking both of them into his front pocket. He’s not sure how long it went on, how much of the gas was cut off, but eventually, a smirk crawls to his lips when Atsumu is _finally_ able to do several rounds in the parking lot without the engine dying. And in every lap he does is his gratuitous shouting of “Long live Japan!”

A chuckle comes out of him, all without premonition, and in that moment of realization, Atsumu turns to him with a proud grin. Something he distinguishes as ugly punches him square in the chest.

“Wanna ride with me?” Atsumu asks when he slams on the brakes to stop at his front. There he goes again, with his shit-eating smile and unsolicited confidence on Kiyoomi’s bike.

Kiyoomi frowns. “I don’t want to die yet.”

“You’re not going to die!” he argues. “Din’ you see me? I was good!”

Kiyoomi chooses not to counter and only stands right there, because very frankly, he’s cold and he wants to sleep, it’s twelve in the morning and the fatigue is gradually crawling in.

But then Atsumu tugs him by the arm and his feet are compelled to step closer.

“C’mon, Omi-kun. Don’t be so prickly.”

 _Omi-kun. Omi-omi._ He wonders where he got that from. Atsumu never called him by a name before (not that he can fully remember.)

Kiyoomi is never this unlatched with people he just met, much less his acquaintances and peers, but he feels himself giving in. Because nothing’s more intriguing than having a past flame you once forgot crawling into your life again. He only has fragments of the guy with midday blonde hair left in his memories from once upon a time, but he knows he remembers him better than the people that came and went by his entire waking life.

So, he gets on the backseat of his motorbike for the first time.

“Helmet,” he reminds Atsumu and is about to get off when the latter takes his cold hands and secures his arms around his waist. He almost falls off from being taken aback, but Atsumu emits a kind of warmth he needs on a summer chill.

“We won’t die if you hold onto me,” he says, throwing him a smile. Kiyoomi is aware of the fleeting proximity of their faces and he knows Atsumu is too by the way he lingers just a little. But he doesn’t get a chance to ponder over it when the engine revs up and they’re zooming by a parade of vehicles starting at a 40-kph speed.

When they reach the empty highway, Atsumu kicks the gear up to a sixth and they run smoothly on the asphalt road. They’re running at a hundred, then at a hundred and ten, and there’s only constant hissing in Kiyoomi’s ears. He tightens his hold on his waist. He has never ridden his motorbike without a helmet on, mostly from safety issues and for the innate reason of keeping himself from being ticketed, but through the speed matching a freefall, he’s never felt freer... and safer.

There’s a winding road ahead; Atsumu minimizes the speed but accidentally steps on the first gear instead of the fourth. The engine bleats in protest and Kiyoomi groans.

“You’re gonna kill it!”

“Sorry!”

Kiyoomi thinks the gas is about to die on them (which is quite dangerous along a turning edge) but Atsumu is quite a fast learner and he instantly has the engine in control. They smoothly swerve from left to right, gear now back on the fifth, and he even has the audacity to do a lean angle.

“We’re going to _die._ ”

“Cool, right!”

Kiyoomi properly envelops his arms around him and scoots closer enough to feel his hard back. And even if Atsumu’s demonic exhibitions scare the living shit out of his sanity, he is unknowingly grinning along with his loud hollers that echo along the empty roads they pass. _Long live Japan_ , Atsumu would yell and Kiyoomi would chant it with him in his head. His heart is thrumming in euphoric beats in his chest and he’s never felt this _alive_ and _infinite_ before.

Maybe he was once, and it was only ever when he was with Atsumu, too.

They have lost track of time by the moment they remember to get a hold of it. Kiyoomi knows they’re in the next town, ten kilometers and beyond than planned, by the way Atsumu eases up on the speed. It’s dark with spots of neon all around, most shops now quiet and the ones with the red LEDs having _closed_ signs on them.

Atsumu lets out a long yawn and he stops by an open inn to ask him instead. “You tired?”

“Since two hours ago.”

“Aight. We’re staying here for the night.”

But much to Kiyoomi’s chagrin, no matter how much he wants to sleep the night away, they’re stuck with a mere option in the form of a dingy inn quite remote from the town’s agora. The one in front of them is packed, the next one closed, and the neatest far out of budget. Atsumu gives him an apologetic grin when they have no choice but to check in with the only money he tucked into his pocket.

“I left everything in the small bag back there.”

“Whatever,” Kiyoomi mutters, heading to their assigned room. He holds the key by the ring and disinfects it with his handy alcohol spray.

He unlocks the room, but before he can even step two feet inside, he recoils and suddenly yells when a cockroach runs past his feet.

“Atsumu!”

“What?” Atsumu is there in an instant to check up on him and comes a bit disoriented. When he looks down to see the insect’s antenna veering open and close, he cackles at the pure disgust and horror on his face. Kiyoomi sidles up to him.

“Kill it.”

“Little dude won’t hurt you, Omi-kun.”

“I’m not sleeping here. I’m going back.”

“But it’s late!”

“There are—” He pauses, then his face twists into a constipated look. “ _...germs._ ”

The cockroach has now flown off to wherever place it’s meant to be but Kiyoomi is more horrified at the fact that he loses grip of its potential whereabouts. Atsumu studies him, careful and deliberate, maybe scrutinizing though gentler and less judgemental, before he softly chuckles and urges him outside.

“Stay in the lobby for a while. It’s cleaner.”

“Where are you going?”

“Just wait.”

Kiyoomi situates himself quite uncomfortably on the lobby couch while he waits for Atsumu to finish talking to the receptionist. He doesn’t really pay attention to what he’s discussing with her because he’s literally on the brink of falling asleep, however just when his eyes are about to close, Atsumu is following the lady to the back room. He forces himself awake to wait for them to get out, then almost falls off his seat when Atsumu passes by him, dragging a mop bucket cart full of cleaning equipment.

Atsumu doesn’t meet his eyes, perhaps assuming that he must now be dozing off, and quietly maneuvers the cart to their room. Kiyoomi looks at the receptionist, a silent question, and he’s only given a small smile with a shake of her head. Now he’s left confused.

He follows Atsumu after a few disoriented thoughts and upon discreetly stepping inside, he finds him squatted in the toilet room, excessively rubbing on the tiled walls and floors. His jacket is haphazardly hung by the sink.

“What are you doing?”

Atsumu almost lands on his butt from the hard startle and he glares at him. “Dammit, don’t scare me like that! Get out. I’m cleaning.”

“At one in the morning.”

“What d’you have a say about me cleaning at one, Mr. Germaphobe?”

“I’ll help you,” Kiyoomi says, and it comes out quite more genuine than intended, but Atsumu shakes his head.

“You’ll get sick,” he dismisses him, meticulously rubbing on a persistent mold. “I got this. I know how easily you get sick.”

Kiyoomi does easily get sick, but that was when he was much younger. Growing old, he’s been to a lot of places to be immune about dust and dirt and whatever he can’t keep himself from inhaling, but the fact that Atsumu knows it all along leaves him a little disoriented.

“I’ll call you when I’m done,” Atsumu reassures, tugging on the showerhead to clean off the dirty bubbles with water. “I won’t be long.”

 _I won’t be long_.

So, Kiyoomi goes his way and keeps himself occupied with a cigarette outside, now wide awake from nicotine and an introspective realization. He doesn’t know how long he’s been out in the cold, but he knows he’s much less anxious in an open space than sitting on the dirty couch in the cramped lobby. On his second stick, Atsumu calls him from the entrance to announce that he’s done.

“Smokin’ again?”

Whirls of white gust from his nose. “What about it?”

He now has his shirt sleeve rolled up to his shoulders and Kurt Cobain’s face is once again soaked in dark flecks of water. “Toilet’s ready if you wanna take another shower. Their towels are clean, amenities are in the basket. Go ahead while I clean the room.”

Kiyoomi inhales his cigarette one last time until it’s half-burnt down before crushing it with his shoe.

“Omi-omi, so wasteful.”

He picks the stick up and ignores him. But he waits by the foot of the stairs, not looking, and then heads back with him inside.

“The lady should pay you for even trying to maintain the standard of cleanliness.”

Atsumu chuckles, casually slinging his arm around his shoulder. Kiyoomi’s rebuff on people crossing the line of personal space doesn’t take effect and he can only let him. “Lady’s very kind. Don’t be so crabby.”

Close to him, Atsumu is quite sweaty from cleaning; Kiyoomi is not very much bothered about it, surprisingly. He’s not even repulsed in the first place (maybe because the smoke still lingers strongly in his nostrils to block out everything else.)

He gets ushered to the toilet that’s become ten times cleaner, and when he closes the door, Atsumu’s signature scent of musk, vanilla, and cigarette smoke remains in the small space.

Kiyoomi gets out of the shower fresh when he spots Atsumu on the floor, skimming through a book he doesn’t remember bringing with him. When he looks up to the opening door, he smirks and whistles lowly at the sight of a shirtless Kiyoomi before him.

“Shower.”

His voice is playfully suggestive. “You invitin’ me in?”

“Stupid.”

He chuckles and gets up, puts the book face down before taking his top off while lazy striding to the toilet. He stops before Kiyoomi, throwing his shirt over his shoulder, and cocks an eyebrow at him.

“Well?”

“...what.”

Atsumu shakes his head and ends his confusion by lightly gripping his waist; Kiyoomi almost recoils like it’s cigarette ember. He can feel his thumb on his v-line and it stays there like a ghost touch even after it doesn’t stay for long. Then Atsumu gently pushes him aside so he makes way through the toilet door.

When the door closes, Kiyoomi is left standing there, quite stupefied and flustered, because on top of the plethora of deal-breakers Atsumu has made himself of, he never fails to push his buttons and kickstart the abnormal running of his heartbeat.

“Why’re you on the ground?” Atsumu asks him once he’s fresh out of the shower, sounding quite surprised, as if attacks him personally. Kiyoomi has snatched the book he’s been reading, but a bookmark sprouts from the page to where Atsumu has left.

He finishes the last paragraph of the first chapter of Alan Watts’ _The Wisdom of Insecurity_ before he flips to the next page and answers him. “You sleep on the bed.”

Atsumu snorts. “What?”

“Sleep. On the bed.”

“Ah,” he drones, putting Kurt Cobain on a hanger. “Ain’t sleeping. You take it.”

“Why?”

“I’ll leave by four.”

“Ah.” _Right_. Kiyoomi almost forgets he leaves every ten hours _and_ leaves for good after ten days. He closes the book, remembers the page he’s in, and gets on the mattress. “Very well.”

Atsumu chuckles, waits for him to get comfortable, and takes his position on the floor. He claims his turn for the book, thumbing on the page where the bookmark is wedged, then asks him.

“Does your neck not hurt? Sleeping like that.”

“Mm,” Kiyoomi hums, checking on the pillowcase and sniffing on it.

“You wanna change that one?”

“It’s fine,” he says when it doesn’t smell funny. He shifts on his stomach to get a better angle before pressing his cheek to the pillow. He gets a better view of Atsumu’s profile up close this way, and it’s quite a vulnerable position (if not risky.)

“I’m not going to sleep,” Atsumu says, forgetting the book altogether. “I’m just going to watch you.”

“Like a creep.”

He laughs, too boisterous for anyone to do at two in the morning, but it’s close to a lullaby, and Kiyoomi’s head swims in subdued sounds.

“I’m making the most out of it,” he mutters, nothing short of inaudible.

But Kiyoomi catches it and he gazes at him open and indulging. He feels drunk. It’s the first time he’s ever stared over someone that long, much let himself feel vulnerable by yearning for a memory with him long gone.

Perhaps it’s the intoxication of nicotine and lethargy altogether, but he lets himself be bold, _just this time, because I might be falling for you at this moment_.

He reaches over and tugs at his arm; Atsumu stares at his hand with a nonplussed expression, and then at him.

“Hey,” he whispers. “Come up.”

He can notice how Atsumu’s eyes melt into something, like a hankering to be near, and he lets his palm slide from his arm, along the protrusion of his elbow, to his hand. The touch is gone as much as the touch lingers, then he shifts to the edge to give him room.

In the small space they are in, in a 4-feet wide bed, Atsumu doesn’t say a word and keeps a polite distance between them. Kiyoomi keeps his position and Atsumu lays on his side, like a keep to his word of watching him fall asleep. His folded arm is tucked as his pillow.

“D’you remember me now?” he asks Kiyoomi in a soft whisper.

“Mm.”

His smile is relieved. “Then are you awkward with me?”

Kiyoomi nods against his pillow. “Mm.”

Atsumu quietly chuckles and Kiyoomi realizes his voice comes out husky at low volume. The tranquility between them is like thin glass, so he doesn’t laugh or utter a word and waits for slumber to wash over him. And as it comes to him gradual and steady, Atsumu also finds his way into his subconscious between a fever dream and a memory replayed.

Atsumu has his hand carefully outstretched, his fingers are trepid and perhaps quivering from hesitation, but Kiyoomi doesn’t speak and only waits for him. Then, he has his fringe swept aside, fingertips through ebony curls, tender at touch in contrast to his boisterous laugh, and reluctant aplomb opposing his confident mischief.

“You’ve grown so well,” Atsumu tells him and Kiyoomi is swimming in words like a lost soul in a scramble crossing. Another interlude occurs and he swears he sees a film of him transitioning from when he was seventeen to the person he’s made himself to be. He’s different but the same, but it’s good, _all good_ , Kiyoomi remembers him now and he will carry the truth of having been long tied to him since that summer day ten years ago.

“You, too,” Kiyoomi whispers. His smile begins becoming easy again, miniscule but still there. “It’s nice seeing you again.”

He takes Atsumu’s hand in his, fingers intertwining, in silent hopes that he might not leave.

* * *

But then he knows it.

He wakes up on an empty bed, warmth on his hand now gone, but Atsumu leaves a reminder that he’ll come back — in the form of breakfast and three emails.

**_[Fr:_ ** **_a_tsumu@email.com]_** _despite bein a teleporter i wish time wud come by fast!_

**_[Fr:_ ** **_a_tsumu@email.com]_** _I already miss you._

**_[Fr:_ ** **_a_tsumu@email.com]_** _think of me while im away, yeah?_

* * *

**_[Fr: sakusa_k@email.com]_ ** _I’m in Ebisu Ryokan in Kyoto._

**_[Fr: sakusa_k@email.com]_ ** _[picture]_

* * *

It’s under a six AM sunrise when they go on a morning run along the remote streets of Kyoto that Atsumu asks him out of the blue.

“D’you wanna come?”

It comes off vague that he takes it with confusion. He’s a little breathless and his full sprint slows down to a jog. Beside him, Atsumu matches his pace with his.

“Huh?”

“With me. Somewhere,” Atsumu says and a tic reappears on Kiyoomi’s forehead with how it’s unclear.

“What?”

“You wanna go anywhere in Japan, Omi-kun? Just tell me.”

Then it hits him. “Ah. Teleportation.”

“Yeah!” Atsumu beams.

They’ve reached past the entrance of a _shinto_ shrine, then Kiyoomi jogs backwards just by the foot of the stairs to start dashing upwards. Atsumu follows him effortlessly.

“How?”

“I’ll only tell you if you wanna.”

“How am I supposed to know if I want to,” he exhales deeply, trying to even his breath. Beside him, Atsumu is as stable as he can be. “if you won’t tell me.”

“It’s only a matter of saying yes or no.”

Kiyoomi stops on his tracks and blinks up at him; Atsumu is expectant. “Well?”

“Well… yes,” he mutters, allowing one foot stepped into whatever his shenanigans may be, but Atsumu is already grabbing his hand, without consent and out of excitement. He glances down at their intertwined fingers and feels a funny prickle somewhere, like a nostalgic stretch in his chest, and it’s as if he’s being brought back to his younger years for a moment.

Atsumu then realizes it and is about to detach but Kiyoomi’s reflex on keeping him close is immediate.

He clears his throat. “Let me take a shower at least.”

“Then d’you wanna shower together?”

“I’ll kill you.”

Another hour runs by, then Kiyoomi finds themselves in front of a commercial building the closest to their inn. He’s brought up until they push the door to the rooftop open, and it’s only when he gives him a skeptic look that Atsumu ultimately tells him.

“We jump off this building.”

“...what.”

Kiyoomi is almost as white as a sheet and Atsumu even has the nerve to cackle right at his face.

“You should see your face right now, Omi-kun,” he wheezes but there’s a light squeeze on Kiyoomi’s waist. It lingers there as a reassurance and suddenly, being ten floors above doesn’t feel like levitating to death anymore. “No worries. You have me.”

On top of Kiyoomi’s abiding confusion and bewilderment, Atsumu has been oddly touchy ever since the night they intimately shared a bed. He would randomly tiptoe to smell his hair while asking what shampoo he’s been using because he doesn’t smell like hotel shampoos at all. (Kiyoomi would tell him a specific brand he constantly brings with him along.) Sometimes, if money would allow, they’d be by their room’s veranda side by side, and Atsumu would study his fingers in between his while marvelling how his cuticles are regularly prim. Because despite his rambunctious self where he’d just shout out of nowhere on quiet nights where they’d go out on a walk, his fingertips would always come gentle when they’d graze Kiyoomi’s. And Kiyoomi could honestly get drunk off of the way he’d touch him in places where his heart would ache just right.

When they step on the parapet of a high-rise building, it brings him nostalgia from a Great Solar Eclipse in 2014, except that they’re both going to fall a decade later. Atsumu reassures him by a hold of his hand, and then they’re looking at the ground ten floors above.

The ground under them seems out of reach now; the people scurry around like ants on a rainy day. Kiyoomi becomes a little queasy at the sight and it’s on instinct that he clings to Atsumu.

“Don’t be scared,” Atsumu chuckles, arms slinking his waist on a steady hold. “It’s only a matter of falling with me.”

Kiyoomi doesn’t get a warning before they fall — he doesn’t scream or think about his head split open on the landing and only holds onto him tight.

It’s weird being in the liminal space of one place to another. He’s barely opening his eyes but all he sees is the sight of freefall while not feeling the fall at all. He doesn’t know what he looks like with Atsumu anymore, all he knows is he’s holding onto him like he’s his saving grace and that his face is pressed to his shoulder. Through a tunnel with a 35mm film running by them at mach speed, Atsumu’s laugh is like an echo underwater.

It happens all too slow while also taking place in a blink of an eye. They get there with his hands sweating. And when he uncouples himself from Atsumu, the smell hits his nose clean. The air’s scent is like fresh rain.

“Where are we?”

“Miyagi.”

They land themselves by a striking view of the Okama Crater. Kiyoomi looks around, nothing else is there besides that rich turquoise surface of water borne by a dormant volcano. The smoke billows from the ground when the earth exhales and he itches for a cigarette.

“Beautiful.” Absentmindedly.

Atsumu crookedly smiles and glances at him. They meet gazes and there’s a click, almost like a puzzle piece. “Right?” Kiyoomi feels the entire axis tilt by a degree.

Then Atsumu takes his bomber jacket off with Kiyoomi looking at him in question. Only then does he know it when he spreads it on the grass and invites him in.

“You first.”

A reflexive snort comes out of him. “What are we doing?”

“Omi-kun, what are you thinking then?” Atsumu lilts and a tic appears on Kiyoomi’s temple again, but it’s by fondness this time. “Am not letting you sit on the dirt.”

So Kiyoomi does as he’s offered, not without a scoff, and makes himself comfortable on the makeshift seat. There’s only a little space his jacket can hold, so he scoots to the side to give space for him and holds a complaint about half his bottom edging to the grass.

Atsumu sits beside him and he casually snakes his arm along his shoulders as he stares into the view.

“Pleasure to have this date with you, sir.”

Kiyoomi masks his laugh with a snort. “A _date_.”

“Why not? It’s just the two of us,” he says. Kiyoomi can feel his eyes follow his hand for the pack of Seven Stars in his leather jacket. “Smoking first thing in the morning, huh?”

He excuses himself from replying by picking a stick with his mouth.

“Gimme.”

He throws Atsumu the pack while digging for a lighter. There’s a flick and a fire, then there’s smoke. Atsumu’s scent of summer leaves and fresh shower intertwines with the menthol.

“Here.” He passes him the lighter but Atsumu refuses.

“No.”

Kiyoomi shrugs and retrieves the lighter into his pocket. Yet before he can even inhale, he’s being pulled by the crook of Atsumu’s elbow by the neck. He mildly stiffens, cigarette almost falling off, and then gets thrown into déjà vu from a few nights ago.

Atsumu tips his cigarette to his and waits for him to follow through.

“Hold yours,” he mutters, cigarette in between teeth and rattling Kiyoomi out of his trance. He steadies his stick with his fingers, while he lets his other hand indulge into holding Atsumu on the back of his neck. It’s the most physically intimate they’ve been, only a breath away from closing a distance he’s too hesitant to cross.

But now Atsumu is giggling for no reason and he wonders what the hell is wrong with him.

“Steady.”

“Tickles.”

He tightens his grip to keep him in place, but Atsumu’s laugh is contagious and he finds himself snorting as well.

“Omi-kun, _stop_.”

“What.”

“Don’t rub your thumb on my neck. I _can’t—_ ” The stick almost falls off his mouth while he can’t shut up. Kiyoomi sighs, giving up, and throws the lighter to his lap.

Atsumu struggles with it, with his stick quivering in the wind and the fact that his free hand is still hanging by Kiyoomi’s shoulder. Kiyoomi keeps the fire alive with a cup of his hand.

“Lighter,” he opens his palm when Atsumu pockets it in the back of his jeans. But he shakes his head.

“No smoking when you’re not with me.”

“Unbelievable.”

When Atsumu gushes smoke following him, Kiyoomi watches how his white swirls find a way to fuse with his. Cigarette smoke distends and mingles to the backdrop of fumes from the crater before them.

“You find me so easily.”

Atsumu inhales on his cigarette and props his knee up. “Habit.”

 _Oh_. Kiyoomi licks his lips and ponders. He thinks about how he’s come to develop a habit, too, and even if he outright denies it, he knows it has slowly made itself comfortable in his heart.

— that everyday, he’s unconsciously expecting for Atsumu’s return after his departure.

“If i die off in this world and get thrown to a different one…” Kiyoomi tests the waters. _Hypothetically._ “can you find me there then?”

“Well, I found you after going through fourteen motels.” Atsumu says it so sure, and Kiyoomi knows it by the way how it’s said so offhandedly. “Why couldn’t I?”

Kiyoomi remembers seeing him the second time around days ago, sweaty and out of breath, disoriented as he can be. He had looked worn out, but the relief when he’d found Kiyoomi again, after losing him a thousand miles away, was enough to radiate into the stratosphere.

Kiyoomi somehow gets the gist of it, that it’s not easy, and that teleportation might be akin to sprinting at the speed of light.

But the thing is, he’s a little dizzy at this point. His stomach lurches and something hard pulls at his chest, prompt and unannounced all the same. He almost staggers in his thought process with how Atsumu always sounds like he means everything he says.

Maybe he’s said something as stirring as this back when Kiyoomi knew him so well, and that unnamed feeling has always been something that tied his soul into the cosmic elements that he is made of.

“Habit...” Kiyoomi repeats and takes his cigarette from his mouth.

Atsumu does the same and they catch each other’s eyes. The smoke remains stagnant and swirling in partly opened mouths, and then Kiyoomi’s gaze slides down to his lips. And it’s as if he’s being suddenly hit drunk, in this very daylight, where it makes him a little lightheaded and a little more honest to himself. Celestially open.

He’s tipsy and staring and pondering, honesty bordering indulgence, overt, and he knows he wants it to happen, that _what would it be if_ —

Then the arm on his shoulder pulls him closer, made to close the distance and all, and Atsumu’s lips are on his. It’s such a stupid coincidence how it doesn’t come off clumsy, his lips lock with his perfect and just right, no teeth clacking, just soft and careful and yearning.

Kiyoomi willingly kisses him back and Atsumu sighs, the smoke gushing from his lips into Kiyoomi’s mouth and some dancing around them. Kiyoomi wants to tell him, _I somehow ache for you, for some reason, like it’s been there sitting in my heart and the universe has been knowing it_ , and he does tell him it — by a closer touch, leaning bit by bit, arm framing his waist, hand to his cheek, thumb on his neck, running back and forth. He kisses him like he aches for him and his heart is open, like the feeling has been sitting right there and the universe has known all along. While he gets drunk off of the kiss, his half-burnt cigarette becomes forgotten.

When they disengage, there’s residual smoke and mint and more of Atsumu on the edge of his mouth. They part at an intimate distance and Atsumu chuckles on his lips while overtly staring at it. Kiyoomi kisses it away with a squeeze in his chest he’s learned to accept and knows he can live off with it as long as he gets to be this way with him.

“I’ve been wanting to do that,” Atsumu murmurs, just leaning closer until their noses are at a feather-like touch of a distance. “It’s you. I know it by a kiss.”

“How many times have you kissed me?”

“This is the third time.”

He grins when Kiyoomi’s face begins to color. “And the first time?”

“When you kissed me first.”

They don’t speak much after that, comfortable more than imposing any noise. Atsumu’s arm still remains tied to him that Kiyoomi wonders if it has gone numb. But his own is draped across his waist, and they stay unmoving even until the sun has risen and the heat hurts their faces. The moment is too perfect that he doesn’t want to leave.

* * *

But eventually, they go back to Kyoto when they plunge from the mountain peak. Kiyoomi finds themselves back in Ebisu Ryokan and things start slow right there.

Atsumu backs him up against the wall and he gets kissed, deliberate and sure under the embrace of nimble hands and all that he ever wanted. He’s never smiled this much and he knows Atsumu can feel it on his lips with how he laughs in between exhales. Kiyoomi loves the sound, the feeling, he takes everything to heart, eyes closed, and embeds it into the very folds of his subliminal thoughts.

The kiss turns deeper when they’re half naked on the bed and Kiyoomi is pressing him onto the mattress with his lips gently suckling his skin. Atsumu treads his fingers through his curls, soft and wanting at the same time, and there’s a kind of heat that burns in his face. He doesn’t know whether it’s from the noon heat or his cheeks or that because Atsumu elicits a dragging breath when Kiyoomi runs his tongue along his upper lip.

 _Kiyoomi_ , he exhales, and it sounds longing. Kiyoomi’s head is swimming in a vast ocean of thoughts about him; he’s all he ever sees — midday blonde hair, forest brown eyes, and summer nostalgia.

This time, it’s Atsumu who asks him. “How many have you kissed before I came back?”

“You’re the only one I want to remember.”

Kiyoomi had said it without thought, as if it’s just drawn out of him and his subconscious has been bodying him the moment he decides he wants to be vulnerable. Atsumu is now in between his thighs, propping himself up with his knee while he’s taking everything of him with a gaze. It’s nothing short of intimate; he’s so close it pains him. He feels vulnerable like this but he’s never felt freer… and safer.

“Kiyoomi. Kiyoomi. _Kiyoomi_.”

Atsumu presses his mouth to his, and they stall right there until neither of them can breathe. He looks at him like he’s been wanting to say something, but can’t say it so he turns his words into kisses.

Kiyoomi feels a selfish plea rise up his throat like bile.

“Hey.”

“Mm.”

“What time are you leaving?”

Atsumu glances at the wall clock and lightly chews over it. “In about an hour.”

 _Ah._ Kiyoomi nods.

But the brooding look on his face might have been too obvious, because Atsumu catches it without missing, and his expression melts into knowing. His gaze is fond, too tender that Kiyoomi almost feels self-conscious.

Atsumu rubs the tip of his nose to his cheek and Kiyoomi can only deadpan, because he is oddly reminded of a doting puppy.

“Don’t miss me too much.”

“I’m not going to miss you,” he scoffs.

Atsumu smirks and edges closer to push his face to the crook of his neck, and like some kind of reflex, Kiyoomi drapes his arms around him.

“Whatever you say,” Atsumu mutters. Kiyoomi flinches when he feels a tickle on his skin. “What?”

“What.”

Atsumu blows air on the spot by the junction of his jaw and throat which Kiyoomi makes a startled sound at. He instinctively rolls his head to the side to avoid him.

“You ticklish right here, huh?”

He begins pushing Atsumu away but the latter’s hold on him is too strong. “I will kill you if you keep on doing it.”

“Am not doing anything!”

“ _No._ ”

“Just one kiss.”

“Go away.”

Kiyoomi pushes him off the bed until he’s grasping the sheets by a thread. Their rowdiness then again crosses the line of troublesome this time, and they know it’s Atsumu’s abnormally loud laugh that goes through thin ply board walls when they get continuous knocking from the neighboring room and a polite _Please shut up!_

“Atsumu, quiet.”

At that instance, Atsumu straight up drops himself on the floor. “Aight, I’m stopping.”

He climbs back on the bed and crawls over Kiyoomi. From there, he leans down and kisses him softly and Kiyoomi feels his stomach do somersaults.

“Don’t miss me too much.”

“I said I’m not going to miss you.”

* * *

But when Atsumu intentionally puts Kiyoomi’s top on and zips up his leather jacket instead of his usual army green, he can already feel the pining claw at him right in the chest.

He disappears through the doorway, absent until the next ten hours, and when he’s out of sight, Kiyoomi throws his arm over his eyes and groans.

“Fuck. I miss him.”

* * *

**_[Fr: sakusa_k@email.com]_ ** _[picture]_

**_[Fr:_ ** **_a_tsumu@email.com]_** _i miss you_

* * *

On a trip back to the local market, Kiyoomi is helping the lady pack up his sour tangerines when he gets a nonchalant comment from her.

“How strange, boy.”

Kiyoomi blinks, and leans down to hear her better. “Huh?”

But the vendor shakes her head and chuckles, “You’re smiling. But it might be just me since I don’t know you at all. I’ve only seen you twice.” Then she flicks her hand in dismissal and gives him his ecobag. Before he can leave all flustered, she shoves him a jar of _umeboshi_.

“Oh, I’ll pay for that.”

“No, no,” she scurries him off. “These are freshly pickled and I’m feeling extra generous today.”

“Ah… thank you.”

“Come again, my dear.”

His phone pings with two emails just when he’s about to leave. When he clicks on it, the screen shows a dot gyrating in circles and he curses at the slow signal of where he is. He’s never been this impatient before.

**_[Fr:_ ** **_a_tsumu@email.com]_** _im home!!_

**_[Fr:_ ** **_a_tsumu@email.com]_** _did ya get me tangerines!! :D_

A laugh is drawn out of him without force, and he earns looks from passersby. He indifferently clears his throat and discreetly glances to the side. He tries to ignore the lady’s curious smile before walking out.

* * *

“ _I went to the woods because I wanted to live deliberately. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life. To put to rout all that was not life. And not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived._ ”

“Dead Poets Society.”

“Ah,” Atsumu perks up, impressed. “So, you remembered then. We watched it once.”

“I’ve been watching it quite many times ever since.” Kiyoomi comments in his defense. “Comfort movie.”

Over beer under the moonlight, they decide to not do anything for the first time. Atsumu always pulls him into the most unexpected larks and they never miss crossing the line of stupidity everyday. But ever since their bond has developed into something more mutually deep-seated, Atsumu has been nothing but intimate to him, and tonight he seats the both of them into talking just about anything lax.

Kiyoomi likes it this way better.

His eyes drift off from the full moon and down to the ashtray. Atsumu has now begun slowly conforming back into his old habits and he’s been leaving his cigarette half-consumed. Once Kiyoomi finishes his own, he takes it and puts it in his mouth.

“Omi-omi...”

“I told you not to be wasteful.”

The filter tastes like peppermint candy. Kiyoomi ignites the tip with a lighter the receptionist provided them, because doesn’t know where his own had gone anymore.

“Hey, Omi-kun.”

“Mm.”

“I’d like you to recite poetry for me while we make out.”

Kiyoomi pauses, thumb on the wheel and cigarette hanging limply by his mouth. He muses over this for a bit and feels a good kind of heat ricochet everywhere in his body.

The teasing grin on Atsumu’s face fades out when he says, “Sure.”

* * *

They’re in the _onsen_ in their next _ryokan_ when it starts with Atsumu inching closer to kiss him. He crawls into Kiyoomi’s lap and the heat begins when Kiyoomi is sighing whispered words into his lips. Words coagulate into lines, lines crystalize into stanzas, and stanzas are recited into a litany. Goosebumps rise up on his skin when Atsumu lazily rolls his hips against his. It’s not hurried, never impatient, Atsumu’s arms limp on both his shoulders when his lips tread along Kiyoomi’s. He has never touched him this intimate, something that’s close to the soul, and he’s never efforted in enticing spark to someone before. It’s all gradual and wanting, and he gives more and more of those inklings that he wants him as much as he does — with his hands pirouetting along the deepest parts of him. Atsumu is all muscles and definition, and it shows by the way his back muscles contract when he bucks his hips in circles.

“I want you,” Atsumu whispers when his movements transcend being lax.

Kiyoomi noses his jaw and breathes him in; there’s a tug to his hair and a cry to his name when he meets his movements below.

_I have heard what the talkers were talking, the talk of the beginning and the end,_

_But I do not talk of the beginning or the end._

“There was never any more inception than there is now.”

Kiyoomi delivers a piece from a book he’s now forgotten when they’re on the bed and Atsumu is a pulsating mess under him. Hips stagger back and forth, and heated exhales weave, all to the words by his mouth pinned to his ear.

_Nor any more youth or age than there is now._

“And will never be any more perfection than there is now.”

Atsumu’s fingernails dig on his back and Kiyoomi groans at the rawness of it. Atsumu does, too, audible and needy, and his ragged breath tunes in along with the pushing and withdrawing of Kiyoomi inside him. He’s not certain whether it’s the long deprivation of having intercourse with someone that’s pushing him to the edge from the chance of having it again, but Atsumu is hot and heavy and he has Kiyoomi good in a vice grip.

 _Urge and urge and urge_ , he whispers and Atsumu whimpers his name.

_Always the procreant urge of the world._

Kiyoomi traces his nose along the vestige of his sweat, and there’s always the smell of residual cigarette smoke in his hair. He loves everything of him... everything that reminds him of the guy with midday blonde hair, forest brown irises, and a smile stretched like sunset horizon. Hands grip on thighs, repressed sounds seek to be contained within paper-thin walls, and their high is now at an arm’s reach.

_Out of the dimness opposite equals advance…_

“Always substance and increase, always sex—”

“— _fuck_ , Kiyoomi. _God._ ”

_Always a knit of identity, always distinction, always a breed of life._

Every once in a while, Kiyoomi would ask him how he’s feeling, and Atsumu would urge him to push this part of him, to thrust it a little deeper, and say that he’s doing it good. Kissing Atsumu is otherworldly on its own, but having sex with him is a different kind of celestial affair, and it’s as if the universe is making sense of their separation... to be this intimate in meeting each other again.

“To elaborate is no avail…”

_Learn’d and unlearn’d feel that it is so._

“C’mere. Closer,” Atsumu calls out. When Kiyoomi obliges, Atsumu’s hands frame his face and they share a deep kiss that sends his knees reeling. He collapses, accidentally putting his whole weight on his hips, and without forewarning, Atsumu lets out a startled moan. “ _Fuck—_ ”

Kiyoomi gets the gist and readjusts his position. “Here?”

“I—yeah, baby.”

He hastens his pace, hitting Atsumu in the right spot until he’s writhing undone. Kiyoomi pants against his cheek and mutters his name whenever he goes in and retracts. There’s a sting on his shoulders and the vague scent of sweat and blood but all he ever means feeling is his entire being on a steady ascend to his high.

 _Kiyoomi_. Atsumu’s voice is hoarse when he speaks, ragged and sexed out, and Kiyoomi discovers it’s his next favorite thing about him.

 _Atsumu_. Kiyoomi presses his name into his ear, a distinct litany made for him, and the next thing is he’s quivering under his touch. Atsumu’s grip on him tightens as their pace progresses into the bed creaking underneath.

“Deeper?”

“Deep enough.”

He did think sex with Atsumu would be another offhand matter for him, an impression brought from his exuberant self and unrestrained attitude. But Kiyoomi later knows that it’s completely another thing being physically intimate with him. He’s chanting Kiyoomi’s name like he’s all he ever knows, as if it’s a password into acquiring anything he yearns for. _Touch me there_ , _hold me like this,_ only a name and he’s willingly granted it. Kiyoomi holds him in all the right places, simultaneously like he hasn’t held him in lightyears and that he’s been doing it all along.

“Again?”

He is now a panting mess after he’s reached heaven the second time. Atsumu below him is all sweat and the scent of sex, and the spark reignites when he tells him, “One more.”

It’s all natural the way Atsumu maps out his body, too. He kisses his beauty marks from head to toe, and he does it without ever stopping, as if he’s already known the very crevices they hide in. Atsumu gently suckles on the birthmark the size of his thumb on his obliques, and Kiyoomi throws his head on the pillow and sighs, eyes closed. He guesses it must be how it feels like — being self-conscious and unguarded with how laid out and open he is to someone.

But he doesn’t cower away. Because Atsumu isn’t just someone. And being naked with him means being vulnerable.

Kiyoomi has always thought they’re different people, a schism of some sorts. But there are days where the sea and sky are infinite with each other.

He loves him as much as he knows it’s going to hurt him.

* * *

“Tell me what ten years ago was like.”

“We were infinite,” he says. “You and me.”

* * *

Atsumu thieves his motorbike to drive around the neighborhood under the late afternoon heat. Kiyoomi internally dies at the request but Atsumu has been adamant about how fine the weather is for it to go to waste. When he gets on the motorbike, he’s become a pro. He’s already familiarized himself with every nook and cranny of it in a short span of time that it’s almost on autopilot whenever he maneuvers it.

They head off on the road on an abnormally high start, and Kiyoomi is left with no option other than to hold onto him tightly. (Partly for safety, partly for self-indulgence.) And when Atsumu abruptly brakes in the midst of a high speed, he squeezes the front brake so suddenly that it almost sends them flying forward. Kiyoomi screams into his ear.

“You’re gonna fucking destroy it!”

“Am trying, okay?!”

For someone as clumsy as him, he luckily has a sense of balance and reflexively plants his feet on the ground.

In today’s episode of _Atsumu does harmful things_ , he spontaneously manhandles Kiyoomi’s YZF, but Kiyoomi lets him be. He consumes his gas to a zero, idly running around in circles in some open space in the far remote places of Osaka, and jostles up a whole agrihood with his unsought yelling. Kiyoomi has forgotten the times he’s muttered “stupid” to himself.

Atsumu would call his name for no reason, _Kiyoomi!_ , then their names, _Omi-omi and Atsumu!_ , and he’s shouting to his heart’s content that his throat has reached past hoarseness. It’s done so raw, so true, one meant to be sent to the gods, as if he needs to let out a kind of heaviness in him as his means of catharsis.

And in response, with eyes following him, Kiyoomi would whisper Atsumu’s name to himself, like a personal prayer.

“Atsumu,” he tries, then the man meets his eyes, as if he heard.

Against the backdrop of sunlight, he’s all he ever sees, so guiltless, so free, and all Kiyoomi’s ever wanted for himself and the manifestation of who he wants to be. He hopes to become like him as much as he yearns for him.

It strikes him right there, under the shade of the ginkgo tree, leaves bordering autumn vermillion, that Atsumu will always and only be at an arm’s reach — no matter the intimacy, the touches shared, and silent prayers of _stay, please stay this time_. Kiyoomi just stands right there, an embodiment of a lighthouse, always waiting by the bay the moment he leaves, always looking for him, knowing he can’t have him for long. Only for a few days in a few chances in this lifetime. And the thought makes him feel alone as much as it makes him feel alive.

_When you know you don’t belong anywhere, you just start leaving places._

_Have you not found a place to stay then?_ He lets his question flutter into the wind while his eyes don’t miss Atsumu, and how his mouth just naturally curls upwards like a crown made for him. Kiyoomi grips on his lighter, just fighting the urge to ignite another cigarette by a hairline.

There’s no smoke that comes out of his mouth, and instead only a silent string of words.

“What’d you say?!” Atsumu asks him from afar.

He is jolted out of his reverie and shakes his head.

Atsumu then shrugs and kicks the gear up, ready for another lap and Kiyoomi lets him be. When he crashes himself into a tree by the sidewalk, Kiyoomi is running for his motorbike and curses at him for the scratches on the headlight.

“ _What_ did you do?”

“I almost died!”

But of course, he immediately goes to check up on Atsumu right after. He lightly squeezes his limb.

“Hurts?”

His laconic way of talking coaxes a half smile on Atsumu. “A bit.” Then he pauses. “ _Shit_ , no way. How are we gonna fuck then?”

Kiyoomi flicks his fingers on his mouth in which he yelps at.

“What was that!”

“Don’t talk about fucking when we’re out of bed,” he mutters, heat crawling up to tint his ears red. Atsumu grins and snatches a peck from his cheek. It’s so light he wonders if he’s imagining it. “I’m serious. Are you hurt?”

“Nothing I can’t manage.”

“I’ll kill you if you’re keeping it from me.”

“What’s up with that trippy compromise, Omi-omi…” Atsumu huffs and helps him up with the motorbike.

He does a once-over, just to make sure of leaks and loose screws, and sighs in relief when he realizes he didn’t destroy it at all.

“Thought I was gonna rob a bank so I can buy you a new one!”

Kiyoomi frowns. “I bought it with my own money. You can never replace its sentimental value.”

“You’re a sentimental person, huh?” Atsumu chuckles and presses a thumb in between Kiyoomi’s eyebrows. “Stop that frown now.” Kiyoomi blinks at it until he’s cross-eyed; Atsumu gasps and gushes. “The fuck? You’re so cute, Omi-omi.”

“What.” He’s genuinely confused. “Why?”

“Oh no.” Atsumu makes an unflattering snort and doubles over. Kiyoomi just stares at him.

“Hey, why are you laughing?”

“Nothing!” He exclaims, amused, and shakes his head in dismissal. “God.”

Kiyoomi observes him throw his leg over the leather seat. He leans in, forearms resting on the grips, and looks up at him. “Can’t believe you’d run for your motorbike first when I’m dying, Omi-omi.”

“It’s my bike.”

“You really love this baby, do you?”

Kiyoomi actually pauses to deliberate on it, such a question of nonchalance, because he finds it amusing how Atsumu refers to his YZF as his _baby._ Then he hums, nodding in thought and it coaxes a half-smile on him; Atsumu mirrors this so easily, and it gives him a sense of belonging how he never really does it alone anymore — smiling.

He knows he’s staring and he knows how open his soul is to him right now. It’s a silent exchange between them — the fondness, the waiting, the execution — then Kiyoomi slides his palm to his nape. He holds him there, leans in, then kisses him.

Against his mouth, he mutters.

“Yeah.” A low chuckle, then Atsumu blares a bright red, lightly gripping his wrist. “I love this baby.”

* * *

Kiyoomi grips on his lighter, just fighting the urge to ignite another cigarette by a hairline.

There’s no smoke that comes out of his mouth, and instead only a silent string of words.

_Please don’t come only to go away._

* * *

It was on the last night before he departs, when Atsumu is pressing him to the bed and hovering over him, that he finally says what he’s been meaning to.

“I love you.”

Three words, threadbare from worldly overuse, but cathartic when he said it clandestine. He utters it against Kiyoomi’s mouth and it goes with a kiss.

Kiyoomi feels himself dissolve into the foam and another kind of heat crawl up to his vision. It’s persistent until Atsumu becomes a hazy picture before him and appears like a three AM dream.

Atsumu looks away to scoff. He licks his lips, nervous, uneasy, and regretful all the same, and when he meets his eyes again, there’s an undertone of desperation. “I love you, Omi.”

Kiyoomi’s hand skims from his hip up to his bare shoulder, palm crawling further until it rests on the crook of his neck. He studies him before he explodes himself; the look on his face is too raw, too honest and it pulls hard at his heartstrings.

“Should’ve said that ten years ago, huh?” On his face is a half-smile, wistful and the smugness now gone. “And maybe you would’ve remembered me the moment you saw me.”

“I remember you now.”

He nods his head and holds Kiyoomi’s wrist to press his lips to his palm. “Just wanted to make the most out of it.”

“We’re here now.”

Atsumu wears nostalgia on the verge of a smile, and while it’s fond and tender, there’s also begging. “I don’t want to leave,” he says.

 _Then don’t. Stay._ Kiyoomi’s mind swims in words of pleading. _Please don’t go. Please don’t come only to go away._ He wants to say it all, but he’s known better than to hope when he can’t defy fate himself. He’s been convincing himself all the while, that meeting him again means trusting the universe and its happenings.

“Stay with me until then.”

Atsumu collapses beside him, positioning himself at a close distance where their breaths are weaving. He lays on his side while Kiyoomi is on his stomach. He’s brought back to a time where they first laid down side by side, unknowingly open, but this time, it’s his fingers that are treading through Atsumu’s hair. The closer they are to time running out, the more he learns that opening his heart is a completely difficult ball game… as much as it’s healing.

He takes Atsumu’s profile one last time, enough to suffice him a decade, and willingly bears the yawning hole in his chest.

“Hey.”

“Hey.” Atsumu’s eyes soften, thumb coming up to softly graze Kiyoomi’s lip. “I shouldn’t kiss you before I go.”

“Why not?”

“‘Cause the gods might get angry.”

“Why do they?”

“‘Cause it’ll make it hard to go,” he whispers, swallowing the approaching crack in his voice. “And I’ll turn eleven days old in here, even beyond that. Then they’ll force-evacuate me or something... into some place where I can never meet you again.” At this, his palm has now rested on his cheek; Kiyoomi can feel the minute trembling of his fingers. “I just want to meet you again. Even if you’ll forget about me in another decade.”

But Kiyoomi inches closer to kiss him, because he’s selfish, and even if he knows better than defy fate, he takes a piece of him with something that mirrors a memory in motion back in Midtown Tower. Debussy’s Reverie. Great Solar Eclipse. Kiyoomi remembers kissing Atsumu and he kisses him again in this timeline.

This time, it’s deeper and lingering, more mature and more longing, nostalgic for reminiscence about to be forgotten, there are sneaks of _I love you_ s in between, fleeting souvenirs for one who will leave.

“Go,” Kiyoomi tells him. “But come back to me and help me remember who you are.”

Atsumu nods without a word, the first time he’s at his quietest, and softly sifts his fingers through his black curls. His fingertips pad his scalp and Kiyoomi sighs against his lips.

“I’ll help you fall asleep. You want that?”

“Okay.”

“You’re not even gonna watch me go?”

Kiyoomi shakes his head and reaches over to cup his face. “I want to. Wake me up when I fall asleep.”

“Can’t afford you to lose sleep.”

Kiyoomi chuckles which Atsumu kisses away. They part at a proximity where their lips slightly touch, enough that he can give him small, lingering pecks. 

Contrasting his words, Kiyoomi’s eyes become heavy by the minutes and they close no matter how hard he brawls it. Maybe it’s the universe’s way of telling him he can’t defy fate at all, and that he should wait until it will allow him the chance of another meeting. His vision hazes like a three AM dream, his subconscious is bodying himself, and with the next words he says, he never really knew that it would already be the last one.

The last thing he sees before closing his eyes, on the threshold of saying his parting message, is Atsumu’s tender smile.

“You’re the best thing that ever happened to me.”

* * *

Falling in love with him in ten days was so easy. Kiyoomi wakes up the following day to an empty space and starts waiting for the same love to come to him in ten years.

* * *

Atsumu takes a piece of him by a cigarette half-burnt down.

While he’s idly lying on the bed, he’s facing the empty space beside him akin to the gaping void in his chest. Atsumu’s scent still lingers on his pillow in the form of residual cigarette smoke and a concoction of hotel shampoos.

While he closes his eyes as a make-believe to his presence, he hopes that somewhere in the future, they’ve already met in their thirty-seven year old selves.

He never really asked him why. And he knows it will remain as an enigma until he learns to be wholly open with his heart. In Atsumu’s absence, the question only reaches himself.

_Why do you come only to go away?_

But he knows somewhere in the universe, through a vessel that might take his question to the stars, Atsumu will hear him, one way or another.

Kiyoomi gets his answer through the audible ticking of the clock, to the time pointing at twelve thirty, hands on opposite sides. It’s a silent address to remind him that although it’s only for a short amount of time, they’re always going to meet at a few points before the entire rotation ends.

_Because I only go away to come back to you_.

In the cacophony of Atsumu’s ghost in this room, Kiyoomi pulls the pillow close to him and sends an email, not to Atsumu, but to himself.

* * *

**_[Fr: sakusa_k@email.com]_ ** _Please remember him. Don’t ask him where he came from. Just let him in, and make the most out of his visit._

* * *

It’s eight hours later when he gets out of bed and his toe kicks something heavy by the foot of the nightstand. He looks down to a familiar sling bag that Atsumu carries with him whenever he goes away.

Kiyoomi picks it up, feeling his heart thrum in abnormal beats when he pries it open.

The first thing he sees is a folded letter bent four times. It comprises a short message written in blocky _kanji_ , and it’s so, _so_ Atsumu.

The sentimentality of it speaks the closeted side of him when he’s the most open and most tender. Kiyoomi reads it and reads it all over again until his eyes burn through the paper and the photographic memory of the letter is embedded to his mind.

_To my only love in a million,_

_Autumn is coming. Find yourself a place to keep yourself warm and I’ll see you healthy when I meet you again._

_— Atsumu_

* * *

The next thing he sees contained in the bag are stacks of cash.

* * *

By fate’s will and after a few deliberations, Kiyoomi finds himself a house in the same neighborhood in the outskirts of Osaka a few weeks later. It’s claimed to be haunted by the townspeople, and children intentionally pass by his house to look at him as if he’s some ghost. But he doesn’t mind. He only hopes for his humble abode to serve him good in the long run.

The kitchen’s got a nice view over the rice fields and his mind is taken back to a time where he first unknowingly warmed up to Atsumu — in the kitchen of a motel room in Yokohama, where they were washing dishes side by side after a mostly one-sided conversation over beef _kare_ and bread rolls.

He snaps a photo of the interior, dusty and dingy but just right (it feels like home in a way and his heart is at ease), and sends it to Atsumu by email.

He never gets a reply back.

The first furniture he buys to fill in his small home is a ginkgo bonsai tree and a ceramic ashtray by it. It’s been weeks since he last smoked, but he has one anyway — a memorabilia that will keep him grounded into remembering someone while he hopes for his return.

He pulls his futon and sleeps on the floor next to the bonsai tree. There, he stares at it until he sees vivid crescent lights out of a fever dream. It becomes a nocturnal habit, a nightly tradition, until autumn comes and its leaves have now transitioned into a shade of vermillion.

Sometimes, he unintentionally leaves some of his meal and gets reprimanded by a certain voice. He loves visiting his thoughts just to hear it. _Omi-kun, so wasteful!_ Then Atsumu would eat his leftovers while Kiyoomi would consume the remainder of his cigarette.

When he’s itching for a smoke, he can’t gratify himself, because Atsumu still has his lighter in that army bomber jacket and Kiyoomi refuses to buy a new one. He chews on gum a lot when he becomes reminded of Atsumu telling him not to smoke when he’s not around.

Up to this day, his last pack of Seven Stars remains contained with two sticks of cigarette. It has been that way since then.

* * *

Sometimes, when the lethargy and nostalgia gets to him, he would only lie on the floor and stare at the ceiling all day because it hurts too much.

But he manages to get by. He always gets by.

* * *

A few months have passed since he’s last received laconically typed emails asking him where he is. Still, anyhow, Kiyoomi always tells Atsumu about the tidbits of the daily life he’s living — even as mundane as constantly praying for his well-being, whether he’s keeping himself warm for the upcoming winter, and if he’s happy wherever he may be in the world. And every time his thumb hovers over the paper plane icon, he always feels a little helpless... but hopeful.

This time, as he composes a message for him, he decides he wants his heart to be celestially open even if he’s missed the chance of _being_ before.

_Just for the night._

* * *

**_[Fr: sakusa_k@email.com]_ ** _[picture]_

**_[Fr: sakusa_k@email.com]_ ** _To my only love in a million._

**_[Fr: sakusa_k@email.com]_ ** _I’m still waiting for you._

**_[Fr: sakusa_k@email.com]_ ** _While you’re away, you always have me in my thoughts._

* * *

In the spring, Kiyoomi turns twenty-eight and still constantly revisits a memory of fleeting apparitions of the guy with a somber smile. He thinks of him, even when he’s on a two lane road heading back to his home in the outskirts of Osaka.

There’s a jig on his motorbike while he’s at an 60-kph speed, something like the entire world crashing down on his backseat, nothing short of boulder-like, and he almost slams himself into the twenty-feet ginkgo tree by the sidewalk when he accidentally wrys the gas full throttle.

Fortunately, he gets the hang of it, what with being familiar about the crevices and know-hows of his two-year old motorbike. Getting ahold of his balance until he’s met by a clear road only does he glance back to be met by a man his size — his face is not visible, covered by a tinted headgear and with whatever bad luck he may bring — and he almost collapses on a daze and wonders whether it’s from the lack of sleep.

Kiyoomi knows it. There’s that smell of coffee and that distinct scent of cigarette smoke residue.

“Rev up!” the man shouts and his arms envelope around Kiyoomi’s waist. Kiyoomi chuckles to himself, overjoyed to the edge of laughing and the engine speaking up for him. “Hey, rev up!”

“I’m onto it,” he says back.

The man laughs behind him, and it so, _so_ familiar, so guiltless, so free, and Kiyoomi’s heart almost bursts from the pain. His hands are shaking. He feels the embrace around him tighten and he’s unable to breathe at this point, but he welcomes it, that celestial-like ache, just to remind himself that everything is real.

_I hope you’re real. Please be real._

Upping his speedometer, from a sixty to an eighty, he easily maneuvers into the empty lane and only laughs off the nasty looks from the elderly people. His ears are ringing when his passenger shouts an unsolicited “Long live Japan!” and as if the universe is responding to him, Kiyoomi hollers with him, echoes zooming by the neverending road before them.

The farther he heads forward and into the place he’s been calling home, the more the road clears to his front and back. They sift through a foliage of bamboo trees, then the engine eases up and the arms around his waist have become lightly gripping hands. The man is still there, his subdued laugh matching the toned-down engine, fingers sliding into the pockets of Kiyoomi’s leather jacket, and he remains like the mystery of how he got there at all.

Then Kiyoomi slams on his brakes by the rice fields, just in front of his house.

He kills the engine off, waits for the man to get off his bike before he swings his leg out of the seat. They’re of similar height, and he knows that build all too well, because it’s not like he’s a stranger at all. He steps back to make sure and frees his head from his headgear, clutching it hard as his heart holds up in anticipation.

“Hey,” Kiyoomi calls out, carefully walking towards the figure, and he has a hopeful smile. “Is it you?”

When the mystery guy answers, his voice is proofed by the foam margining his helmet and it’s a certain one that shoots straight through Kiyoomi’s chest — it’s nasally, airy, and never sure, but all that he’s been longing to hear. He watches in overt anticipation, one that speaks that he’s been waiting for him all along, and observes the way the guy upends his head to slide it off, ruffle his strands to get rid of his hat hair, then smoothen it again on the bend back up.

He’s expecting for a knife or a gun, worse case scenario, _death_ , followed by a news article about how a country rando just got killed off by a man in ripped jeans, army bomber jacket and a ratty Kurt Cobain shirt, but no, that’s certainly not it, not when his thoughts get contrasted by summer nostalgia in the form of forest brown irises. Midday blonde hair. Stretched lips like sunset horizon.

Almost a year has gone by but Atsumu stands again before him, still the same when he last left, except that maybe his hair has now become shorter. He doesn’t have that somber look on his face anymore, just genuine relief, pure solace, as if he’s finally finished running infinite stretches of winding roads.

He’s less tired, less wistful.

And when he speaks, Kiyoomi’s smile rivals the weather.

“It’s me.”

* * *

_When you know you don’t belong anywhere, you just start leaving places._

_Have you not yet found a place to stay then?_

A whisper of the wind, then an answer brought.

_I have._

**Author's Note:**

> poem sakusa recited in the sexy scene is walt whitman's 'song of myself'.
> 
> only song on loop that got me thru to finishing this is third eye blind's 'motorcycle drive by' where motorcyclist!sakusa came from.
> 
> (edit: sam made a lovely [fanart](https://twitter.com/omitooru/status/1345674838682214402?s=21) of atsumu in a kurt cobain shirt! thank you!)
> 
> i'm on [tumblr](https://sund0wns.tumblr.com/)!


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